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Historians do understand, though, a good deal of how apocalyptic movements arise, consolidate, and evolve. The lessons are relevant to our time, and there is compelling evidence to suggest that apocalypse thinking — a sense that we are living in the “last days” or entering a period of convulsive upheaval and transformation of some kind - is, increasingly, percolating through western society. Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Tokyo subway gassings, Heaven’s Gate, the Solar Temple suicides, rumors of alien abductions, even the bombing in Oklahoma City - all of these events and more suggest to a growing number of apocalypse-believers of all sorts that “something is happening,” and that the year 2000 plays a crucial role in whatever this might be. Come the millennium, it shall all be revealed—Apocalypse. After all, the term apocalypse (from the Greek, apokalypsis, an uncovering, unveiling, or revelation) means just that.
Atheists, of course, remain skeptical of these claims. As rational thinkers, we know that the year 2000 is a human artifact of our whimsical and sometimes contradictory calendric inventions; and more, we know that esoteric interpretations of apocalyptic texts such as Daniel or Revelation ignore the wider historiographic problems raised by critical Biblical scholarship. We can also reflect on earlier apocalyptic movements and periods of millennialist outbursts, especially in the American experience.
William Miller predicted the Second Coming and other eschatological events on three separate occasions in the nineteenth century, giving forth a message which attracted tens of thousands of enthusiastic followers. This “failure of prophecy,” rather than discrediting predictions about the Second Coming, actually stimulated the formation of subsequent movements such as the Seventh-Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Today, thousands - even tens of thousands - of churches, sects, cults, and groups may be fairly described as apocalyptic; and many of them await the coming of the next millennium with heightened expectations.
There are times when life imitates art - or is it the other way around? The mass media certainly are both fueling and reflecting apocalyptic Angst with their fascination with doomsday and end-of-the-world themes. In the 1950s, the proliferation of sci-fi invasion films - War of the Worlds, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, even Red Planet Mars (the most egregious example of cold-war jitters) were thinly-veiled allusions to the Russian menace, or the wider notion that our way of life was being subverted and threatened by alien influences, be it Moscow or some distant race of extraterrestrials. Not surprisingly, this same period abounded with equally apocalyptic themes - papal ruminations about the Fatima prophecies, fear of nuclear annihilation, or colorful predictions about the return of Jesus in time to thwart the territorial ambitions of Kremlin warlords.
Nearly a half-century later, the focus has shifted but the apocalyptic themes are remarkably similar. In recent years there have been films about alien invasion (Independence Day), a slew of offerings dealing with rogue asteroids crashing into the earth - more of these are in the production tube - killer viruses, and other menacing themes. The economy is booming, interest rates are low, unemployment is down. Why, then, are people so engrossed in themes which emphasize the religious, mystical, paranormal, and apocalyptic?
If the media are shaping, defining, and/or reflecting our Angst about modernity and the uncertainties of the future, we should become aware of the proliferation of programs, specials, and dubious documentaries about the coming Apocalypse which pour into our cultural consciousness through the medium of television. We should consider the contributions of Chris Carter, the creative force behind television’s immensely popular The X-Files. Two of Carter’s Millennium series episodes (see my accompanying “Owls and Roosters in Prime Time”) involved factions of the shadowy “Millennium Group,” aptly described as “Owls” and “Roosters.” 1
Owls and Roosters: Understanding Apocalypse
The Owls and Roosters of the TV series actually derive from an apocalypse bestiary created by Richard Landes of the Boston University Department of History - a foremost academic studying the millennialist phenomenon and head of the Center for Millennialist Studies. Landes proposed these two animals as appropriate descriptions for major players in the apocalypse narrative: Roosters announcing the onset of some kind of millennialist scenario - “The time is now!” - and owls, more ruminating and cautious, who admonish us, “Not yet, the time is not here!” (To this bestiary I will shortly propose a third denizen - the Tortoise - less entwined in the heady mysticism of the apocalypse narrative and drama who cautions us, instead, “Think about it... there’s no evidence that this will ever happen!”)
Roosters are energized with the first break of day, and according to Landes’ metaphor, herald the new millennium. William Miller played the role of a Rooster, but he was also much more. Roosters can often be Apocalyptic heralds, “someone announcing the onset of the apocalyptic moment, and indicating the proper preparations.” 2 And the Rooster category can include Christians, Jews, Muslims, New Agers - even secular apocalypticists - whose view over the historical horizon informs them of ominous and significant events headed our way. Contemporary Christian Roosters often see “signs and wonders” of prophetic fulfillment. Verses of the Bible are the usual source of this evidence that we are living in the “final days.” The “wonders” are fantastic events, such as the proliferation of alleged miracles, or claims of increasing numbers of supernatural visitations, often by the Virgin Mary.
Those Roosters who claim to perform the wonders or motivate others to take action within the context of an apocalyptic time table may be described as apocalyptic spurs or escorts. These Roosters do far more than announce the Millennium: they escort, even accelerate its development. The Japanese Aum Shinrikyo sect, implicated in the Sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway system, played this role, believing that their actions hastened the onset of Armageddon and their own ascendancy to ruling the new world. In this process, an apocalyptic figure - self-proclaimed prophet, guru, guide, messiah — transcends the role of herald or escort, and emerges as an agent of transfonnative change.
Look closely: not all Roosters appear the same. All are excited by their version of forthcoming apocalyptic events, but their individual narratives and claims differ, as do their expectations about the future. Signs-and-Wonders evangelicals have a distinctly different vision of what lies beyond the apocalypse horizon than does the half-mad Internet prophet who warns browsers that an army of reptilian aliens is poised to invade and devour humanity.
Normal and Apocalyptic Time
 wls, Roosters, and my proposed candidates for the Apocalypse Bestiary, the Tortoises, exist in distinct yet overlapping stages of what Landes describes in terms of a three-stage sine curve “whereby one can trace the natural rhythm of an episode of apocalyptic time.” But all of this is possible only because of a transformation in how people have come to perceive time itself, a change marked by the transition from some medieval and certainly pre-Christian viewpoints to the linear time embraced as part of the Christian Weltanschauung.
Paul Halpern has noted the demise of circular views of time in favor of the Christianized linear timetable. Jewish, Christian, and Moslem religions are all linear and break from the cyclical view of time that characterized many ancient and pagan systems. “The concept of time
in the Bible is a linear, historical approach,” Halpern adds, a departure from the themes of recurrent creation, destruction, and recreation one discovers in Hinduism, or discovers embodied in the compelling, ancient symbolism of the Ouroboros.
The serpent devouring itself appears in manifold representations. It is the self-consuming dragon of the Chou dynasty of China around the 12th century BCE. It appears three or four centuries earlier in the Egyptian culture, appearing in the Chrysopœia (“Gold Making”) of Cleopatra during the Alexandrine period, moving through the Phoenician culture and thence to the Greeks, who gave it the name ouroboros — “devouring its tail.” In the Norse mythology, it is Jormungandry, and to the Hindus it is a celestial dragon, sometimes a snake, the Nagas, that surrounds the giant tortoise on which four elephants ride holding up the world. Ouroboros is also one of the serpent deities to the Dahomey in Africa, where he is Da or Dan.
A version of Ouroboros appears on artifacts found throughout Iraq and Iran, dating from the 6th to 8th centuries of the current era - the Babylonian “demon bowls.” Here, the snake is a spiral beginning at the edge of the bowl’s rim and moving toward the center and to infinity. The ouroboros also is discussed in Horapollo’s Hieroglyphics as a symbol of the universe 3 and later in the Hieroglyphica of Piero Valeriano, who wrote:
“The serpent that holds its tale in its mouth... is customarily taken for the course of a year, for time, for age, for immortality. That it signifies the passage of a year, Virgil demonstrates clearly: ‘Atque in se sua per vestigia volvitur annus’ (Georgics 2). And that the serpent is a symbol of time, St. Cyril gives this reason: that it stretches out, and curls back again and again, and that represents the passage and revolution of the days and years...”
Whereas time in many ancient cultures was cyclical, repetitive, and often tied to the natural world, Judæo-Christianity incorporated time as an element in a divine plan with linear direction that invested history with a sacred meaning. Ages of Natural Law, Mosaic law, Grace, and finally Glory (this last epoch being attained only after the Parousia or Second Coming) describe all of human history, from creation to Final Judgment.
There is, however, a peculiar circularity in this otherwise linear scheme. Mankind begins in grace and innocence at the Garden of Eden, sins and blasphemes against God, is offered redemption, and finally witnesses the destruction of Armageddon and the renewal of salvation in the Second Coming. Human history is again set right in the multiplicity of views about what life shall be like in the New Jerusalem. 4 But while Grace occurs, this development is linear, a one-time event. For Christianity, human events in time are bracketed by a sacred state out of time, “forever-without-time.” It is on this temporal stage with its four ages, its epochs, centuries, and millennia that the directional, linear unfolding of events takes place beginning with Creation and ending with Apocalypse.
Christians debate endlessly the precise order of events which are revealed in the texts of the New and Old Testament; but it is this sequence of prophetic occurrences which distinguishes the linear, Christian notion of time from its earlier ancestors. Halpern notes, for instance, the difference in rhythm and tempo between Homer’s Odyssey and Milton’s Paradise Lost. This requirement - of divining both the eschatological meaning and sequence of the elements in apocalyptic narratives - has created a fragmented, at times bewildering, realm of “end-times camps” which is the source of much of the conflict between Owls and Roosters.
The Day of the Roosters: Announcing the Apocalypse
Whether they are Christian, Jewish, New-Age, or some other variant, Roosters play the role of announcing the onset of Apocalypse and enunciating its features. The Roosters — more than the Owls, certainly - are immersed in apocalyptic time and consciousness. Their world is one of “signs and wonders” which confirm prophecy. And Roosters are often non-institutional, even anti-institutional. While there are “rooster religions,” in many cases those who announce the apocalypse to their fellows quickly find themselves at odds with ecclesiastical institutions and authorities.
As Landes and others have noted, the Roosters “have the most compelling answers” about the significance and hidden meaning of events taking place. Natural catastrophe, human atrocities, mysteries - all are hammered into a Procrustean narrative which seeks to explain. The millenarian message is the most “full-throated of hidden transcripts.” Whether it is the layered truths of the Kaballah, the conundrum verse of Nostradamus, the rhetorical mysteries of Revelation, the Rooster claims the ability, and destiny, to decode and make public this deep, esoteric truth.
Landes also notes that these “hidden transcripts” often convey a social message, “whereby those not in power express their resentment toward those in power.” Indeed, apocalyptic belief is not the ideology of established elites. Why should they announce their destruction in some purifying and terrible judgment? After all, apocalypse is a problematic forecast to any group which is establishment and in power. Roosters often find themselves as the political, economic and social outcasts; and within the Christian tradition, they also drift beyond the doctrinal boundaries established by the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Jack Gratus, in his book The False Messiahs (Taplinger, NY, 1975), adds that in the decades and centuries following the reported life of Jesus, apocalyptic expectations - of the Second Coming and Christ presiding over an earthly millennial kingdom - “indicated a lack of proper respect for the great achievements of the Church.” Indeed, the Millennium it was declared, had arrived in the founding and spread of the institutional Church. Augustine (340-430) emerged as the scourge of millennialist faith, and pronounced the greatest of the apocalyptic texts, Revelation, as a spiritual allegory, not a futurist account of events about to unfold. The Church condemned literal interpretation of millennialist accounts as a “superstitious aberration” at the Council of Ephesus in 431, thus drawing the crucial doctrinal distinction between the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and the Roosters of the first millennium who anxiously awaited, even declared, the immanence of Parousia and apocalypse.
The conflict between institutional authority and the more rabid visions of millennialist prophets may explain why early Roosters either leave few records behind in written form, or why so much documentation which has survived often reflects the position of church officialdom and the Owls. Later Rooster movements are better documented, of course, and the invention of moveable type and printing may have been a factor in energizing those movements which challenged ecclesiastic orthodoxy and, as a consequence, found greater latitude and ability to spread their apocalyptic message. Leap ahead 18 centuries from those early Roosters, and one finds William Miller - perhaps the premier American Rooster - spreading his warnings of Parousia through newspapers. 5
Classifying the Roosters
How, then, can we classify the Roosters? While all share the common characteristic of announcing some sort of millennium or apocalypse, many also can be recognized for other traits.
• Roosters usually exist outside of the theological and political mainstream. Their apocalyptic visions and millenarian expectations can place them in conflict with prevailing ecclesiastical and civil institutions. Rooster movements and uprisings can often reflect deep-seated social discord, yearnings for Utopian societies emphasizing “fairness,” “godly behavior,” and “justness.”
• Roosters are inevitably wrong in their predictions of Second Coming or other apocalyptic events. But this failure of prophecy does little to discourage the millenarian impulse. Within Rooster movements, participants often follow a behavioral-mental trajectory beginning with initial excitement (the “truth” or “light” has been revealed in the form of prophecy and/or conversion to an apocalyptic ideology) and anticipation. When the prophecy fails to be fulfilled, Roosters often then doubt their worthiness. “Does God have some other plan?” Perhaps the failure of prophecy itself is a “deeper message” which the apocalypticists must then divine. This dissonance between the promise and the result at first results in conflict; then, for many, there is reconciliation. “Now is not the time, but we must await yet another sign...”
• Rooster movements, like most mass phenomena, often involve colorful, intelligent (if eccentric) and dynamic leaders. The leaders instruct others in the apocalyptic message and often command loyalty on an equally profound personal level. The relationship can be a highly authoritarian one, where the apocalyptic prophet/guide/agent reveals the truth, but at the price of absolute obedience. Shoko Asahara, the blind guru of the Aum “Supreme Truth” sect in Japan, fused a bizarre ideology of Christian, Buddhist, and New-Age elements into an apocalyptic creed; his followers “submitted” to his absolute judgment and authority, memorizing his teachings, turning over their worldly possessions to the sect, even paying considerable sums of money for the privilege of drinking his urine. David Koresh of the Branch Davidians dispensed his own version of apocalyptic prophecy, and was a sufficiently charismatic presence to enable him to disrupt close family ties which previously had bound his followers together. In the history of millennialist fervor, though, this is not novel. In the Crusade of the Shepherds or Pastoureaux in mid-13th century France, thousands followed an apocalyptic dreamer known as Jacob, Master of Hungary. Known for his fiery speech and imposing presence, he openly attacked the clergy, claimed miraculous powers, and controlled the marital arrangements and sexual practices of his followers. Only when he turned his wrath on the landed nobility did the monarchy strike back, eventually killing Jacob and many of his flock. 6
• Rooster movements often reject the mores and practices of the culture around them as a mechanism for distinguishing themselves from the rest of the world. Their institutional practices are often manifested rapidly, in accordance with the perceived development of “signs and wonders,” or other markers on the apocalyptic timetable. They cover the gamut from extreme asceticism to debauchery, from murderous rampages to mass suicide. The Free Spirit movement of the Middle Ages taught a life of simplicity mixed with sexual abandon; orgasmic release with random partners often followed long periods of self-denial and prayer.
• Roosters are impatient. The signs and wonders which they seek are not generations and centuries in the future as many of their Owl counterparts may believe. Apocalypse is imminent, proximate, anxiously awaited. This fosters a contagious excitement, where in the midst of apocalyptic yearnings, “new” signs can suddenly and fortuitously arise to fit the circumstances. But reality must eventually confront these anticipations. As noted, however, this failure of prophecy can often bind the Roosters together in tighter community, or in new forms of organization.
• What of this coming apocalypse? For Roosters, the coming Millennium can be anything in nature as long as it is momentous, a break with the present and immediate past. It can be a return to a previous “Golden Age” (which for some Christians borrows heavily from metaphors about the Garden of Eden), or it can be the establishment of a utopia, a “New Jerusalem.” Other elements can intrude here, however. Before the Millennium, the thousand-year reign of Christ or some other Utopian vision, there may be carnage, chaos, a “Great Chastisement.” One benefit of apocalyptic thinking which Roosters can offer is the idea that those who have it coming will get theirs! Here, the apocalypse is a time of retribution against the wicked and sinful; it can also be a time of the “Great Tribulation” which will test the faith of the True Church. Any number of scenarios enter here when Roosters begin to describe what the dawn they so vocally announce will be like.
The Owls: Apocalypse, yes... but not yet, not now
In the history of apocalyptic movements and fervor - call them “epidemics” - Roosters are initially the more conspicuous in making their presence known. Owls enter the fray only to be ignored. They caution the Roosters, and those who would follow them, that the “signs and wonders” of apocalypse are false, that the time is coming - but not yet here. Owls usually believe in some sort of fulfillment, but not necessarily in the literal manner and timeline which is so enthusiastically embraced by the Roosters. In addition to perceiving the Roosters as impetuous and misguided, some Owls even consider them to be seduced by dark forces, and ultimately harmful to the cause of faith.
In the dynamics of any apocalyptic movement, Owls assert themselves only after the burst of initial millennialist excitement has run its course. Roosters have gathered their followers, proclaimed evidence of signs and wonder, even made specific predictions. But the battle between light and darkness does not occur. As Richard Landes has noted, the deity has “tarried” once again, and the apocalyptic event fails to occur. It is the time for what Landes calls "postapocalyptic time and re-entry." Normal time comes to the fore. 7
One method by which Owls have challenged the Roosters is through the creation of the so-called sabbatical millennium. This is a chronological scheme using portions of Genesis and Psalms, 8 and was used in arguing against early apocalyptic datings. Under the sabbatical millennium, Owls could argue that there were still several centuries remaining (from Creation to the start of the “true” Millennium 6,000 years later), and that current millenarian prophesies were premature. Hippolytus 9 used Exodus, 25:10 to derive the period of time from Creation to Final Judgment, five and one-half millennia. “From the birth of Christ, then, we must reckon the five hundred years that remain to make up the six thousand (years) and then the End shall be.” 10 It should be noted that Hippolytus, an Owl who “postponed” the Millennium, was also a thorough, institutionalized cleric - at least for a time. He rose to prominence during the rule of Pope Zephyrinus (198-217) whom he accused of ecclesiastical laxity, and opposed similar improvidence in the future pope, Callistus, who permitted the giving of communion to those guilty of mortal sins. 11
Another example of the identification between Owls and established clericalism was Augustine (354-430 CE), considered the leading church father and scholar of his era. He experimented with several philosophical systems including Manichæism, Neoplatonism, and finally Christianity to which he adhered with a near-fanatic zealousness. After being ordained (391 CE), he rose to become Bishop of Hippo in North Africa (now Annaba, Algeria) and emerged as the premier scourge of heresy and schism within the church.
As Christianity melded into the apparatus of state and eventually took over the old Roman Empire, the interests of church doctrine and government stability became one. A heresy, schism or outbreak of apocalyptic fervor threatened all who held power, and Augustine argued forcefully against such contrary ideas. In City of God, he held forth that apocalyptic texts such as Revelation were spiritual allegories, and that the true millennium “had begun with the birth of Christianity and was fully realized in the Church.” 12
Owls are not immune, however, to the excitement and intense anxiety which often characterizes times marked by “apocalypse fever” and millennialist anticipations. Often, they come precariously close to jumping on the millennial bandwagon. The same social and cultural forces which provide fertile soil for apocalyptic outbursts outside the Owl Community (usually, as noted, the institutional church) can affect those institutions, and how they perceive their relationship to the world.
No less apocalyptic was the confrontation between Christianity and new enemies which arose centuries later, Bolshevism and Marxism. Although Marx had postulated an economic system which some Christians saw as reflecting the doctrinal teaching of Christ, the reality was that in the newly established Soviet state there was no place for the competition or ideology of organized religion.
Owls on the Edge
Two examples of this ambivalence which Owls have with their Rooster counterparts are the periods of the Crusades and the Cold War, a period separated, coincidentally, by nearly a chronological millennium. In both cases, political and ecclesiastical institutions (primarily the Roman Catholic Church) were challenged by perceived, aggressive threats from both within and without. Both periods were characterized by strident apocalyptic rhetoric, certainly from Roosters and, at times, even from Owls.
In the case of the Crusades, much of the Angst which reverberated through the Church resulted from the aggressive expansion of the Seljuk Turks - aggressive and militaristic Muslims whose armies swept through Palestine, Syria, and into the Christianized Byzantine Empire. That external military threat offered the Owls a chance to expand their own political powers, however, and deal with heresy and infidelity at home. Other factors contributed to the enormous popularity of the Crusades, however, including the prospect of adventure (a break from the tedious repetition of everyday life), the promise of salvation for those who joined the papal armies, and greed.
The Crusades were certainly an Owl venture designed to reconquer the Holy Land, to secure firmly the place of the institutional church, and to hold in check the growing Islamic insurgency. Even so, the perceived threat of the Seljuk empire and other factors were fertile soil for apocalyptic belief and Rooster movements, especially when watered by the Papacy itself! While the nobility flocked to the organized Crusader armies which had assembled in late 1096, an unexpected movement arose under the leadership of the monk known as Peter the Hermit (1050?-1115). 13 By the time the nobility began its march, Peter had established a reputation as one of the prophetæ of the era. As Cohn notes, he did so without the imprimatur of clerical authorities, but he was widely respected as an ascetic and former hermit. “A small, thin man with a long gray beard, he possessed a commanding presence and great eloquence...” 14 And he preached a message of apocalypse, directed at both the Muslims and the Jews, the latter being depicted as killers of Christ whose presence on earth would delay the Second Coming. As Peter’s rag-tag army of pauperes, “the poor people,” moved ahead of the regular Crusader columns, they conducted a pogrom killing the Jews they encountered and seizing their property.
Jerusalem and its capture was more than a military goal, however. It stirred the imagination of Crusaders as no other city could. It was the true “holy place,” a symbol of redemption, in what many perceived as the ultimate struggle between good and evil. The Moslems were branded as “the sons of whores” and “the race of Cain.” Even the capture of the city did little to ameliorate the blood lust.
Norman Cohn notes that, “Scanty though the records are for this early period, they are sufficient to show that in the People’s Crusades a great eschatological ferment was at work... On all sides they beheld the ‘signs’ that were to mark the beginning of the Last Days, and hear how ‘the last Trump proclaimed the coming of the righteous Judge.’” Indeed, the period of the Crusades was characterized by an outburst of apocalyptic frenzy, self-proclaimed messiahs and yearning for “the Last Emperor,” an earthly savior who would usher in the New Jerusalem and the Millennium. What began as an Owl Crusade against the infidel (for less than purely spiritual goals, it should be added) quickly assumed the mantle of an apocalyptic drama. 15
No less apocalyptic, though, was the confrontation between Christianity — again, predominantly the Roman Catholic Church — and a new enemy which arose centuries later, Bolshevism and Marxism. Although Marx had postulated an economic system which some Christians, including at least one Archbishop of Canterbury, saw as reflecting the doctrinal teaching of Christ, the more prosaic reality was that in the newly-established Soviet state, birthed in the 1917 revolution amidst the first World War, there was no place for the competing institution or ideology of organized religion. At least the Infidel Moslem had embraced a deity. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and other midwives of the Marxian agenda did not. In addition to the confiscation of religious property and the expulsion of the church from much of the civic square, an aggressive policy during the Comintern period to “export the revolution” - and a godless one at that! — sent shock waves through most of the West.
The papacy was quick and universal in its condemnation of this new foe, and a proper chronicle explaining even this one aspect of the confrontation which emerged between western powers and the Soviet bloc (and, later, China) is beyond the scope of this article. It was a confrontation case in the most Manichæan of terms, light against darkness, good locked in a struggle with the ultimate evil. But one example of the apocalyptic dimensions of this clash of world views is an event with particular eschatological significance - the so-called apparition at Fatima, Portugal. There on a hill outside the small town, three peasant children claimed to have experienced apparitions of the Virgin Mary between May 13 and October, 1917. The children claimed that the Lady revealed several prophecies to them, one of which was that Russia would spread “errors” throughout the world, but would eventually be converted back to Christ. That prophecy was repeated by Popes in Rome and lowly priests in neighborhood churches for several decades, but always in a conditional sense; only if mankind “repented” would Russia “be saved” and the holocaust of nuclear war, or some other Armageddon, be averted.
Apparitions of the Virgin, often accompanied by prophetic utterances, have been deemed a benchmark of apocalyptic and religious fervor, as well as a phenomenon closely associated with social dislocations, cultural stresses and periods of extreme anomie. And the rising number of similar events - visions of Jesus or May, even sightings of alien beings and abduction reports - can be considered reasonable evidence of pre-Millennium Angst.
Classifying the Owls
• Owls have generally dominated the discourse in chronicles of apocalyptic movements. Early Roosters especially operated within societies with little literacy, and often left a minimum of texts. The Owls, however, enjoyed the advantage of being part of an institutionalized church which existed outside of apocalyptic time, and which accumulated writings, including its own teachings and codes. 16
• Early Owls, while belittling the premature and impulsive rantings of the Roosters, nevertheless often embraced their own apocalyptic timetable which for the most part has come and gone. Hippolytus’ 500 extra years have passed, and other schemes to postpone prophecy have likewise succumbed to the inevitable course of time.
• Owls have also enunciated the theological position that “no one knows” the hour or day of the Second Coming,
• Owls, since they often accept some kind of meaning in the millennialist rhetoric, are not always immune to the feverish excitement and anxiety of apocalyptic time. Bulls and other documents from the Roman Catholic Church have often described contemporary events in terms of a struggle “between light and darkness,” certainly a crucial element in the apocalyptic mindset. The Crusades were often depicted as part of that titanic confrontation. Later, Fascism - but to a greater extent Communism - played the role of a similar foil.
A Time For Tortoises
Unfortunately, the dialogue about contemporary millennialist movements and ideologies is, thus far, one involving boisterous Roosters, somewhat more cautious (even skeptical) Owls - many of them identified with the academy - and a handful of us who feel uncomfortable in either camp. It seems fitting, then, to introduce a third creature in this Apocalypse Bestiary. I propose the tortoise.
Ideally, an owl would have served this symbolic function admirably; after all, we associate those night-time birds with wisdom and deliberation. The tortoise, though, is perhaps the next best candidate. We know this creature from Æsop’s fable as symbolic of determined persistence and a kind of self-assured knowledge, patience, and self-confidence. It is difficult to imagine a tortoise becoming excited by the rantings of roosters, or succumbing to the sophistry and misdirection often employed by the owls.
The tortoise represents a “third position” in the debate over apocalypse. Roosters and owls share considerable faith and belief in a supernatural realm capable of affecting, even governing, events on earth. The tortoises do not. We analyze the rhetorical jousting in the apocalypse debate in terms of underlying social and cultural causes. We are rationalists and skeptics; and we prefer to understand apocalyptic ideologies and movements in terms of coherent, causal factors.
How best can we state the position of the tortoises on the subject of the Millennium?
• Tortoises see millennialist movements as legitimate areas for scholarly inquiry. The fact that these beliefs - in apocalypse, judgment, Utopia - may have little basis in the existential scheme of things does not alter their “meaning” for individuals and communities throughout history. The study of millennialism tells us that apocalyptic texts and beliefs have motivated people on a scale perhaps comparable to mainstream religious and secular political movements.
• These movements speak to the condition of human society. The “deeper meaning” of prophecy and the myriad forms of related millennialist phenomena - movements of the faithful, visions, Utopian outbursts - reflect the dynamics of the larger society. We understand this meaning through the social sciences and by putting millennialism in its proper historical context.
• Tortoises agree with those Roosters and Owls who hold that, ultimately, this discussion is one of rationalism versus irrationalism, but reject assertions which argue that the irrationalist impulses inherent in millennialist ideology can provide, for the West especially, a replacement or alternative to cold, reasoned, scientific inquiry.
Into the fray!
For many segments of the culture, the onset of the year 2000 is like a magnet, attracting the interest of diverse groups which see the end of our century (and the beginning of a new millennium) as a prophetic benchmark in human history. Historians continue to debate whether Europe underwent any religious convulsions at the end of the first millennium. But there is little doubt that the end of this thousand-year epoch (though very much an arbitrary invention of human time keeping) has energized religious believers of all colorations. What happens in the next several years needs to be examined, studied, understood. The Roosters already give us a cacophony of prophetic claims about what is to happen. Christ is due “soon,” we are to meet our alien keepers, we are on the edge of catastrophic or equally transformative events. The Owls do little to stabilize this intellectual chaos, or to stem the rising “culture of the irrational” which is being fueled by millennialist fevers. The culture needs to hear a more reasoned and informed voice. Tortoises should appreciate their important role in explaining in sensible terms what is taking place.
After all, when we look into the often inscrutable face of prophetic utterances, we really don’t see god, angels, devils, or aliens. We see ourselves.
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Notes:
1 See Richard Landes, On Owls, Roosters, and Apocalyptic time: A Historical Method for Reading a Refractory Documentation Union Seminary Quarterly Review 49 (1996): 165-85 ![[back]](../../backarrow.gif)
2 Richard Landes, “Apocalyptic Glossary” in the forthcoming book While God Tarried: Disappointed Millennialism and the Genealogy of the West.
3 Horapollo (also Horapollon), a Greek grammarian of the 4th century CE. Like the Romans, he interpreted the hieroglyphs as being symbolic and allegorical in character, not phonetic. This view lingered until 1700 and the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, which led to translation of the glyphs by Jean François Champollion.
4 St. Augustine refined this view, but held firmly to the argument that Christianity was incompatible with any cyclical view of time. There is no eternal recurrence which, according to Halpern, would rob divine events of their eschatological significance. Time begins with the Garden of Eden and ends at Final Judgment.
5 William Miller (1782-1849) went from a position of philosophical deism and freethought, after immersing himself in Biblical and apocalyptic writings, to become the preeminent “date setter” of his era. Using the tenuous chronology of the accounts found in the Bible, he predicted that Christ would return to earth in 1843, and declared this in his 1836 book, Evidence from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ. Thousands were exposed to his ideas, as Millerite temples, tracts, and newspapers flourished - mostly on the east coast of the United States. The failure of this prophecy was aptly termed “The Great Disappointment,” but rather than diminish the yearning for the Millennium, it curiously energized a whole new generation of apocalypticists, including the Seventh Day Advent movement.
6 Gratus, op. cit., p. 75. See also the definitive work by Norman Cohn, The Pursuit Of The Millennium, (Oxford, 1961), one of the most intereating and comprehensive works on the general subject.
7 It is at this point, says Landes, that apocalyptic groups often make their greatest cultural impact. The dynamic “produces an association which can survive in normal time,” with any number of possible features. The Millerite movement, for instance, mutated into the Seventh Day Adventist sect and, through off-shoots, contributed to Jehovah’s Witnesses and even, nearly a century later, to what evolved into the Branch Davidians.
8 These passage refer to a thousand years “as a day” to God.
9 (170-235 CE), also the first of the “antipopes.”
10 Gratus and Cohn, op. cit.
11 His most noted work is the Refutation of All Heresies, in which he argued against the doctrines of Gnosticism. He was known, too, for his studiously gathered collection of instructions and other writings pertaining to Church rules governing baptism, priestly conduct, giving of the Eucharist and other minutiæ of clerical organization and rituals.
12 Cohn, op. cit., p. 29.
13 Also known as Peter of Amiens.
14 Cohn, op. cit., p. 62.
15 Norman Cohn’s work is a crucial source in understanding the full millennialist dimensions of this time. In his The Pursuit Of The Millennium, Chapter 4 is particularly noteworthy, and aptly titled: “The Saints Against the Hosts of Antichrist.”
16 Landes observes that narratives about these movements are composed “after they have reached a coherent pattern, after the ‘sense of an ending’... has made it possible to tell a coherent tale.” This retrospective, however, comes when the Owls are in control. The Roosters have been discredited as failed prophets, mad men, heretics. The lesson is a simple but stark one: “winners” often write history.
Conrad F. Goeringer is an antiquarian bookseller and freelance writer who lives on the cape of New Jersey. A frequent speaker at American Atheists national conventions, he is director of American atheists On-Line Services and a contributing editor of American Atheist.
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e stand on the threshold of both a new century and a new millennium. Whether you consider that temporal demarcation to begin on January 1, 2000 - what seems to be the popular consensus of when the 21st century truly begins - or accept the more highbrow and probably “correct” version, that 2001 is the first year of the new century, for many people this transition is a wondrous, even dreaded event. From apocalyptic Christian fundamentalists to New Agers and even a handful of Hindus and Jews, the onset of this new millennium is something replete with historic significance. Is it the Second Coming of Jesus? The beginning of a persecution when the faithful will, literally, leave their earthly constraints to meet the Messiah in the air? Could it mark the arrival of intelligent and benevolent aliens who will save us from our own folly? Perhaps it will usher one or all of the Four Horsemen onto the stage of human history - or reduce us to nuclear winter through asteroid impact?